Have you ever visited a restaurant and as soon as you picked up your phone to Snapchat the wonderful- looking food, you see your phone’s battery is dead? Or even been in the middle of making a plan with your potential date, and your battery gave up on you? Well, seems like KFC had experienced it on its own (maybe that’s why they decided to film this into an advertisement).
In a bizarre marketing gimmick, Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC, as we know it, introduced a 5-in-1 meal box, called ‘Watt A Box’, with an inbuilt power bank, that would let people charge their phones while eating their greasy food.
The box is introduced in only Delhi and Mumbai (they might just know our obsession with pictures hashtagged foodporn, I suppose), and can be won only through an online contest on KFC India’s Facebook page, and a few customers can also get the limited edition boxes at select outlets if they are “lucky enough”.
KFC India’s Chief Marketing Officer, Lluis Ruiz Ribot said, “Each one of us spends a considerable time on our smartphones daily, and the phone battery going dead is almost like a nightmare! With the launch of Watt A Box, we have gone a step ahead and also introduced an element of utility into the box”.
The box comes with USB cables for iPhones and Android phones, and the power bank “boasts” of a power of 6,100 mAh, and is removable from the box, which makes it easy to carry.
But, upon testing by BGR, the well-hyped Watt a Box could only charge 17% of an iPhone 5s and just 7% of Redmi Note 3, before it drained out. (Now that’s a bummer.)
This sure seems like a technological boon, as who wouldn’t want to have food and charge their phones at the same time, but the fact that the power does not even last till the food ends is not appealing enough to buy the 5-in-1 meal in the hope of being the “lucky customer”, unless they are hungry enough to eat the whole box, or even spend so much money on it.
According to the reports released by Yum! Brands (which KFC is a part of), in April 2016, KFC’s sales have declined by 1% in India in the quarter of January to March, “as western style foods continue to witness slump in sales with consumer appetites for pizzas, burgers and wraps falling short of companies’ expectations” according to the Economic Times.
While KFC was busy making a box to attract people and to recover its declining sales, they forgot the fact that the previously biodegradable paper boxes are not too environment-friendly now.
The box has received mixed reactions from people, who knows if KFC’s marketing strategy works out in their favour? Maybe now people will actually lick their fingers, just to use their phones.
What a time to be alive!
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